After a setback, Ladybug Guy lands on his feet

"Lost Buddy, found," could describe the happy turn in the adventures of Buddy Foley, Seattle's Lord of the Ladybug.

When we last saw him this summer, he was being evicted from his ramshackle wood studio on 15th Avenue West, near the Interbay Golf Course.

The plot of land, on which he'd been struggling to make rent, was slated for commercial development. After two decades, he had to go, a casualty of Seattle's real estate boom.

Before bulldozers razed the artist's refuge, before Foley set free the thousands of ladybugs he kept to sell to gardeners, he shut his front door on the world.

After getting the boot, he slunk away. Low on cash and with health troubles, he was in a fog, a funk.

But that's lifted.

When I bumped into Foley, 62, Tuesday near a bus stop on lower Queen Anne, he smiled. And he had a message: Buddy's back.

"I can't talk too long," he said before doing just that, riffing like a jazz musician on a Miles Davis jag.

"Gotta catch my bus."

Foley's been staying at the Green Tortoise hostel downtown. Before that, he slept in his turquoise 1968 Ford F-100 with chromeless bumpers.

A professional keyboard player, Foley also has been tickling the ivories. People were probably too focused on Hillary Clinton at Benaroya Hall the other night to notice the guy they walked right past, with wispy, graying hair, playing "Take the 'A' Train" on the piano in the lobby.

Yes, that was Mr. Foley.

And that was he marveling like a schoolboy over an electron microscope at a big science symposium last week at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. He just couldn't resist slipping inside.

Foley said his recent life spiral brought him to a fresh place where he encountered new faces and enlightenment. The local food bank, he said, has broadened him.

"I've met the most amazing, intellectual, interesting people there," he said. "It's not all about them being on drugs or having some mental incapacity. I've heard stories like 'my husband left me' or 'I lost my job" or 'I just got sick.' "

Speaking of sick, Foley said he's out of the woods when it comes to the digestive disease doctors feared would abbreviate his colorful life.

"I was supposed to be dead," he said. "I heard one doctor whisper to another doctor in front of me, 'I think this guy needs to get a will.' "

"Hello? Bad bedside practice!" Foley said with a chuckle. "Seriously, I feel like a million bucks."

Another bus rolled up, and then another, and yet another -- a downtown-bound trolley, or so Foley thought. Oops, wrong bus. It was going to Capitol Hill.

He came back and plopped down next to me, showing off the contents of his bags, free treasures found hours before at a Ballard food-and-clothes bank: a green tie, an elegant brown shirt, a stylish coat he swore up and down was Giorgio Armani.

No, you don't come across folks such as Foley every day. He's a quintessential character in the narrative of our city, quirkily brilliant and gregarious. He allows you see the world in a wonderfully different way, through his eyes.

As a kid, he grew up in modest housing near Vancouver, Wash., before his family moved to a farm. He went to the University of Washington; before that he played in a band, "The Midnight Sons," which he says once backed up Sonny and Cher. He's hosted parties attended by politicians, artists and strangers he has met on his journeys. He's friendly with Sen. Maria Cantwell. He recently bid farewell to another pal, the late Seattle historian Walt Crowley.

Sure, the site of his old home is about to become a Whole Foods store, but he's kept it in perspective.

I'm alive, he says.

Foley once taped more than 1,400 hours of video of bands across town -- just for fun.

That's in addition to the steady stable of more than 80,000 ladybugs he liberated not long ago.

Another Metro bus arrives -- the 11th to pull up. He gets up to go for good, singing, "Bus, bus, magic bus!"